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0 pointsgiantg25y ago0 comments

I can agree that the view of whether something is helping or not could be subjective.

That's not necessarily true about the infrastructure. The estimate I saw said if all the gas cars were replaced with electric ones then the infrastructure would have to double or triple depending on how much off-grid equipment is adopted. I know my house would need an upgraded connection to handle a 50amp charger. I'd probably need a whole extra line and panel if we needed to charge 2 or three cars at once.

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twunde5y ago

I was actually thinking about the long-distance transmission lines, but that's a good point about potentially needing to upgrade local lines. As a non-EV owner, I can't discuss much but I was under the impression that you could just plug in to a normal wall socket for a slow charge. I suspect that you're referring to the Level 2 quick charging station. If that's the case, that would certainly impact you depending on how old your house is and whether you're running your own solar panels

FYI, if you have a source, I'd be interested in reading about it.

giantg2OP5y ago

I can't find the original article I saw this in (8 or so yrs ago), but here's one that talks about some of the infrastructure sizing issues (45 vs 100 kVA). The second one talks about current grid storage/production and the need for increased capacity.

Good news is that we are nowhere close to the breaking point, but the numbers in the article are way less than if all (or even half of) cars were replaced with EVs. It should take a long time to get to that level of adoption anyways.

At least for me, I would want access to fast charging options, whether in homes or at dedicated stations for trips. The 8 hour charge is great for daily usage though. I wonder how that time can hold up as the range gets longer (increased capacity with same 15 amp wall plug).

https://www.fleetcarma.com/ev-clustered-charging-can-problem...

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-07-influx-electric-vehicles...

twunde5y ago

Thanks for adding the sources. I'm 80% sure that The Grid [https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Fraying-Between-Americans-Energy...] had discussed electric cars helping solve some of the distribution/transmission problems, but that was from the view of the large power companies, not the smaller local munis (and maybe paired with smart meters? It's been a while since I read it). However, after reading the two articles you cited, it's actually just moving the bottleneck and in the wrong direction to a point where it's harder to manage changes.

giantg2OP5y ago

Not sure why people are downvoting this.

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twunde5y ago

FYI, if you have a source, I'd be interested in reading about it.

giantg2OP5y ago

https://www.fleetcarma.com/ev-clustered-charging-can-problem...

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-07-influx-electric-vehicles...

twunde5y ago

giantg2OP5y ago

Not sure why people are downvoting this.

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